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My research is concerned with issues of individuality and identity in
medieval philosophy, discussed by theologians in the context of debate
about the resurrection. The basic question, still fertile and
provocative in modern philosophy, is, 'in virtue of what does someone
remain the same individual over time, and across drastic physical
change?' Modern philosophers discuss putative effects of brain
transplants on personal survival. Medieval thought experiments were no
less strange: if a cannibal eats you, can they claim your flesh at the
resurrection?

My doctoral research focused on these issues from their roots in
Aristotelian texts, through Thomas Aquinas, to the couple of decades
after Aquinas's death in 1274. It explored how reflection on the
resurrected body generated new scientific theories as theologians
discussed the physiology of nutrition and growth, the 'genetic'
transmission of characteristics across generations, and the nature of
matter itself.

My post-doctoral project is in the area of politically motivated
intellectual history. There is much to indicate that the institutional
politics of the Dominicans and Franciscans shaped hard scientific
thinking in the late medieval west, and historians are beginning to
understand the dynamics involved as new manuscript evidence is brought
to the table. My own research will continue to look at individuality and
identity, focusing on the Dominican intellectual tradition, and using
the Franciscan tradition to counterpoint and clarify the distinctiveness
of the Dominican approach.

Recent published work relates to these topics and also to historians'
methodology, exploring how arguments historians use can be expressed in
terms of formal logic.